The Colorado chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA) recently appointed Jerod Swanson to serve as an Assistant Regional Director for the Central Rockies region. Jerod was born in Fort Collins, Colorado, but his family eventually moved to Minnesota and he grew up in the Twin Cities (i.e., Minneapolis-St. Paul) northern suburbs. “I started hunting and fishing at a young age,” he explained. “My father first taught my brothers and me, but later I found friends in high school and college ...

The Kirtland AFI club and New Mexico Chapter had an incredible time at the Annual Lincoln National Forest stream restoration project on April 20th! Our crew worked diligently to repair two small beaver-like dams, aiming to restore the floodplain of a creek that has suffered from channelization since the 19th century. This restoration is crucial for the Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout population, which has vanished from the creek since the 1990s due to the loss of their ideal habitat. Rio Grande ...

Bear hunting has been an integral part of California’s history since the Golden State was founded in 1850 and for thousands of years prior to colonization. In 2021 and 2022, anti-hunting groups pushed aggressively for legislation and then a petition to the Fish & Game Commission that would have banned bear hunting in the state. Thanks to concerted advocacy efforts by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA) and many other conservation groups, we defeated these attempts to ban bear hunting. Our ...

Oklahoma BHA Members,  HB3462 has advanced to Governor Stitt’s office and will likely be considered this coming week.  IF passed, the bill would initiate a program involving captive bred deer and integrating them into our wild, huntable, population.  This legislation passed both the House and Senate but appears to have no support from the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. The intent of the legislation is to potentially combat Chronic Wasting Disease. Our OK BHA Board is certainly ...

History In 2011, a law was passed permitting natural gas drilling at state parks in Ohio. (Ohio Senate approves bill to allow oil and gas drilling at state parks). Largely due to public concern about the impact on state parks, then Governor John Kasich effectively eliminated leasing of these lands by not appointing members to the Oil and Gas Land Commission (Ohio House bill would ease fracking in state park). There were various attempts to restart the process, but none was successful until ...